The Giorgio Griffa Foundation is pleased to be inaugurating its new exhibition venue in Turin with INSIDE.
Curated by Sébastien Delot, the exhibition connects the stories and works of seven artists who have been working for years in the same building as the Foundation: Nunzio Di Stefano, Marco Gastini, Giorgio Griffa, Luigi Mainolfi, Elisa Sighicelli, Grazia Toderi, and Gilberto Zorio.
A group show that weaves together visions and languages, revealing the largely unknown identity of a unique cradle of contemporary art—the former Michelin complex in Via Oropa 28, Turin, “an isle within the city, a small SoHo, just a short way from Turin’s historical center,” as the curator writes in his piece for the exhibition.
Introduction by the curator
Why do our eyes see things more clearly in dreams than when we are awake?
Marco Gastini, Giorgio Griffa, Grazia Toderi, Luigi Mainolfi, Nunzio, Elisa Sighicelli, and Gilberto Zorio all share a common interest in systems of representation and the writing of time.
Without a doubt, that is why their individual trajectories possess an indeterminate energy that flows into and shapes a collective identity. A path that crosses space, borders, languages, and books to always find the shortest route.
The exhibition is like an echo chamber, where two works by Giorgio Griffa speak and respond to those of the other artists. The words of Gilberto Zorio offer a key insight into the underlying concept of the exhibition: “Energy is the possibility of filling a void and the possibility of emptying out content; it is the possibility of bridging present and future, the possibility of unlocking the conscious and unconscious functions of language.”
By contrast, Marco Gastini dives deep into his paints, crafting a magical alliance with matter. Like him, Nunzio experiments with color through the superficial combustion of wood. Elisa Sighicelli takes a sculptural approach to photography, where it is never a flat depiction of reality, but a filter—like the city of Saõ Paulo, glimpsed through the grille that envelops Niemeyer’s iconic Copan Building.
The intelligence of matter is conveyed in the terracotta works by Luigi Mainolfi, which stand before us like an archetypal legacy of ancient civilization. The series of drawings by Grazia Toderi evoke remembrances of an ancient cosmology that follows the path of the stars, a motion where, “in an instant of time, one too brief to be measured, space turned and wrapped around itself.”
The exhibition has been arranged to create a landscape, where each of the artists has their place. To borrow the words of poet Etel Adnan: “To paint landscapes is to create cosmic events. The space occupied by a painting—its own dimensions—is the space of memory. When we close our eyes, the vastest of fields occupy an inner screen just a few centimeters wide. We transpose that screen onto a canvas that, in turn, reflects our memory back into the outside world.”
Sébastien Delot